Send Out the Clones
by Allaine
Summary: Set three years after "Under the Milky Way Tonight", the seventh installment of the Unacceptable Sitch series finds Team Possible putting some ghosts to rest. These ghosts answer to "Acceptable". Or they used to.


Chapter One

Shego despised karaoke.

Shego also despised mediocrity so, there was the reason.

She liked sticking to the hobbies she was good at. She _loved _doing the things she excelled at. Singing, especially singing in public, was neither of those things, so she didn't do it.

It wasn't that she was lazy. (Well, okay, sometimes she could be lazy.) She wasn't one of those people who tried things once and quit if they weren't instantly great at it. She'd been passionate about martial arts for most of her life, and it wasn't like she'd sprung from her mother's womb with a flying kick.

Torn from her mother's womb before she died. Whatever.

There were just those things you could become really good at if you practiced long enough, no matter how much natural aptitude you had, and there were those things where you just _needed _to have the knack for it. She knew her singing ability was average at best. She wasn't terrible. She didn't sing off-key. She had an okay ear for pitch. But she had no true talent for it. Years of vocal training wouldn't change that. So she didn't bother.

If Shego despised mediocrity in herself, then she positively loathed it in others. Karaoke drew both the talentless and the merely adequate like moths to a flame. It was a comfort zone, a place where they could sing to their heart's content without judgment because everyone else was there for the same reason, and _they _didn't want to be booed off the microphone when it was their turn either.

Naturally Dr. Drakken, somewhere between "hopeless" and "below-average", had been a big fan. Naturally he'd want to meet here. It was dark and crowded, everyone would be staring at the stage, no one would be able to eavesdrop, and when they were done, he could turn in his slips of paper with the DJ.

Shego wondered what he sang nowadays. Years before, when she'd occasionally allowed him to drag her to places like this, he'd tended to lean towards bad country. "All My Exes Live In Texas", that sort of dreck.

_Why am I wondering that, _she asked herself. _Why would he even sing tonight? Five minutes, and then I'm going to tear out his vocal cords so I can garrote him with them._

She wanted to. She really, _really _wanted to. Drakken had been a constant thorn in her side ever since he mind-chipped her years ago, put a knife in her hand, and told her to kill Pumpkin. He'd been put in GJ prison after that plan failed so spectacularly, but then Dr. D had escaped with the cloned Acceptable siblings in tow three years ago.

Drakken, John, Don, and Yvonne. Who of these did NOT torture her for years? Answer: "none of the above".

Although Shego supposed she had only herself to blame for working for Drakken all that time. Dr. D had been useless in many areas, but she respected competence where it existed, and he'd been better than her and most villains at two things: dreaming big, and building big. Shego would have been content to live for years in a never-ending cycle of theft and luxury, but Drakken had ambitions, combined with a seething resentment of those who allegedly saw themselves as smarter than him. He'd had death rays and mechanical giants and volcanic lairs.

He'd also had money. So she got the cycle of theft and luxury after all, except instead of the thieving paying for the high living, the doofus paid for the thieving.

And last of all, Dr. Drakken eventually had Kim Possible. Shego may have hated mediocrity and respected competence, but she loved excellence. Kimmie was so good at shit, she practically shined.

Granted, she was a total goody-two-shoes when Shego met her, with a cocksure belief in her own superiority to Shego and an infuriating habit of backing it up. But . . .

Of course it was here that her train of thought, which had finally begun taking a more pleasant direction, was interrupted by the man taking the other seat at her table.

"Shego," Dr. Drakken said awkwardly.

She glared at him. Shego _really _glared at him. She hoped that he was getting the message loud and clear. Her being there was _not _her idea.

"Just so you know," she growled, "me being here was _not _my idea."

What the hell, he always could be pretty dense.

"I'm sure it was not," he said. He lifted a finger toward his face, perhaps to scratch something, and then apparently thought better of it. Considering he was using some kind of face paint or makeup to conceal his blue skin, that was probably a smart move. Unfortunately that was about as smart as Dr. D ever got.

Neither of them spoke for a minute. Shego just sat there, feeling her blood pressure spike. She'd told Betty pretty emphatically that this was a very bad idea, that it would be an ambush, that the entire karaoke bar would probably be filled with Synthodrones dressed as customers, while the Acceptables butchered some song choice Drakken thought was clever like Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal".

"I appreciate your concern, Shego," Betty had said, "and while I'm suggesting you should meet with him alone as he insisted, you're certainly not going to _be _alone. But I still think you should do it."

"Why?!"

"Most of Team Possible's enemies are rather predictable, I find," Betty had replied. "Dr. Drakken is definitely in that camp. After what happened the other day with Monique, however, and now this request for a meeting? Suddenly Drakken is acting very _unpredictable_, and I'd really like to know why before he does it again."

Ol' One-Eye had had a point. Shego had never really been able to anticipate the direction his sheer stupidity would take him when she'd worked for him, but he rarely ever surprised her. Not shooting Monique at point-blank range the other day with something best described as a cross between a rail gun and a salt shaker, something that would have caused catastrophic damage to every organ you could name, that had surprised everyone. (It was even more surprising than Dr. D getting the drop on her in the first place.)

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me," Dr. Drakken finally said, fidgeting with packets of sugar. "I'm sure it wasn't easy convincing you."

"No, it wasn't," Shego replied. "Look, are you going to get to it? My patience had its limits even when I _didn't _want to rip your kidneys out."

Drakken swallowed. "Yes, well, that is, I mean to say – "

Shego rested one hand on the table and allowed green plasma to lightly caress the plastic surface. Thin tendrils of smoke spilled out from under her fingers. Hey, it wasn't like she was ever coming back here.

"I'd like to give myself up!" Drakken said quickly, his voice suddenly high-pitched.

The green light shining from below her palm winked out. "So?" Shego asked incredulously. "Walk into a fucking police station! You don't need me for that!"

"I might need your help to stay there though, Shego, thank you very much!" Drakken retorted. "You _know _what they're like."

She felt a sliver of ice penetrate the burning heat of her anger. "Yeah, I guess I do," she said. "Except I was their _prisoner. _Aren't they supposed to work for you?"

Drakken snorted. "Could I ever make you do something you didn't want to do when _you _worked for me?"

"You really should stick to Synthodrones, Drakken," Shego sneered. "At least they don't talk back."

"It's not the same thing, Shego!" Drakken complained. "Of course they don't talk back, they barely talk _at all. _They're not real people, they're not – you know."

Sad thing was, she did. Not only was Drakken terrible at being an employer in charge of his employees, but he'd always tried to blur the lines between them by wanting to be "friends" with her. Shego suspected he'd done the same with the Acceptables – and probably been even less successful at it. If Shego could be rather "prickly", the siblings could be rather "sociopathic".

If Shego was being honest with herself, that made what Drakken did to her later even worse.

"Of course, they're not exactly real people either," Drakken added bitterly. "Which is the problem, Shego."

"Because they're clones? Hey, you brewed 'em, you bought 'em."

"Clones. Hrm, yes, they certainly are."

Shego didn't like how that sounded, or how she felt a few hairs stand up on the back of her neck. "Drakken, you didn't do something unusually . . . moronic, did you?"

"No, of course not. It may have been slightly reckless, perhaps, but it was several months ago, and obviously there were no long-term study results to consider."

She _really _didn't like how that sounded. "Please tell me you didn't start cloning them in bulk."

"Certainly not," Drakken said haughtily. "I'm a trained scientist, Shego. More importantly, I have a very developed sense of self-preservation."

He could have fooled her.

"Look, Dr. D, are we going somewhere with this or is this just some twisted trip down Memory Lane?" she asked, exasperated.

Drakken didn't answer at first, glancing sidelong at the person who was currently mumbling their way through a Hooters song.

"Oh my God! This IS some twisted trip down Memory Lane!"

"Shego, please! That is NOT what this is. It's rather serious, actually."

"I'm not sure if I should be relieved or nervous," she retorted.

Shego suddenly realized the two had managed to slip right back into the same banter they'd always used when she worked for him. What was _wrong _with her?

"Have you noticed," Drakken said slowly, "if the Acceptables have become rather more . . . aggressive lately?"

She narrowed her eyes. "I guess so, yeah," she said.

Whether or not you believed Drakken when he said he had a "well-developed sense of self-preservation", lately the Acceptable siblings appeared to have an increasingly _less _developed sense. Betty had observed a few months ago that this was a development she'd feared. If you could always make another clone of yourself, you could just recklessly throw caution to the wind and fight without any regard for your own safety. Her biggest concern was that one of them might intentionally try to get himself or herself killed, just to take one or more Team Possible members with them.

Obviously that hadn't happened yet, but each of the Acceptables had died at least once in the last six months, usually taking some risk that had put Kimmie in double danger. Not only did it threaten HER life, but inevitably Kim would then endanger HERSELF when she tried to save them.

"Well," Drakken explained, "every time the cloning process takes place, a very small amount of the original DNA is destroyed."

"Yeah, so?"

"Unfortunately, I never had any of the Acceptables' original DNA to begin with. Two years ago, when our paths crossed with you, Ms. Possible, the buffoon and – ironically – DNAmy, you may recall that John had a rather gruesome encounter with her. To recreate him, I had rather few options."

Since the original clones had been created from DNA Senor Senior Junior had retrieved from the cavern they'd taken their fatal falls into, long after GJ had removed their bodies, Shego couldn't exactly blame him for that.

She really wanted toblame him for making her think of SSJ, though.

Instead, when she flicked him in his forehead, she said, "That's for saying her name."

"Ow! Shego! It's not like I had anything to do with her current state!"

"Yeah, but I still don't like thinking about her, and you had to bring her up."

Years before, DNAmy had embarked on a very quick weight-loss program by splicing her genetic material with that of a hummingbird, vastly accelerating her metabolism. She hadn't been very happy later when she discovered Shego had spliced the avian DNA right back OUT of her while DNAmy was unconscious, and the lunatic had put it back IN at the first opportunity.

If Shego ever got her hands on whomever had given DNAmy the idea that just because Cuddle Buddies were two animals mixed together, that didn't mean _she _couldn't avail herself of only one genetic improvement . . .

"What is she up to these days, anyway?" he asked curiously, covering his forehead with one hand.

Shego shrugged. "Eleven different strains of animal DNA, last I heard," she said. No one was counting any more. DNAmy had become a hybridized genetic abomination, completely unrecognizable as any species normally found on Earth. Unfortunately she'd retained her malignant genius-level IQ, which meant she was probably up to at least twelve by now.

Then she kicked him in both shins.

Drakken tried to say her name again, but it came out more like a whimper.

"Look, _Dr. D, _I'm tired of pretending to have an actual conversation with you!" Shego snarled. "So you didn't have the original DNA. What happened then?"

"I – I had to use DNA cloned from the original instead! I had to do it for all three of them!"

"Okay, and what does that mean?!"

Drakken shrank back. "Well, it appears that, actually it's rather interesting if you see the Acceptables as a long-term study – "

She growled menacingly at him and raised both gloved hands.

"Apparently clone DNA begins to degrade over long periods of time!"

"Degrade? What, like disintegrate or something?"

"No, um . . . Dementor spread a rumor years ago that he had some kind of new ray gun that he had used to briefly turn Ms. Possible into some sort of cave person?" Drakken suggested.

Shego dropped her hands, then dropped her head into her arms. "Yeah," she said, remembering that very well.

"Yes, well, they're starting to become a bit more like that. Lately it's been manifesting itself mostly with – extreme violence."

She groaned. "Pumpkin, are you getting this?" she mumbled.

Sitting at one end of the bar, with a perfect view of Shego and Dr. Drakken, a disguised Kim Possible sighed. "Ook ook," she said into her Kimmunicator. "I wish I wasn't."

To be continued . . .

Author's Note - I'm trying to get back into a writer's "frame of mind" here. This won't be a huge story like what I used to write, and I doubt there will be a sequel. I hope a few people enjoy though.


End file.
